CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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user_mda
user_mda

Reputation: 19418

Directories owned by a number instead of usernames

I am trying to write to a directory on a network folder but am facing file permission issues. Upon investigation I found that the directories I create are owned by two types of users. When viewing permissions using ls -l. A few directories have my username as the owner while others have a 'weird number'. I can write to the files owned by the 'weird number' but not my username.

My userId is different from this number This number is not a userID for any other user on the system. Any idea about what that number is

Upvotes: 0

Views: 842

Answers (1)

Tobias
Tobias

Reputation: 11

Generally if you see userid's numerically it means that the system your shell runs on does not know the username for this userid.

One typical case of this is if you extracted a tar archive from a different system without the -o flag. In this case the numbers would be the userid from the originating system where the tar archive was created and they may not exist in your system.

Another way can also be that you mount a network folder, but your system does not know the usernames for those userid's - in which case it will display the userid numbers.

This problem can also extend to groups (files having a groupid which does not correspond to an existing group on this system) in an analogue way.

Upvotes: 1

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